Lifestyle Design:
Learn How to Rewrite the Rules

Lifestyle design is a powerful concept that has truly revolutionized the way people think about living their lives.

In a nutshell, the idea behind lifestyle design is simple:

Don't believe the way the world tells you you should live your life. This includes working at a job you hate until you're 65, buying a lot of crap you don't need, and deferring your happiness until you retire and do what you really want to do.

Instead, know that with some creativity most of the rules of life can be bent or broken. And, for the brave, you can even write your own rules.

To elaborate, here are the main ideas of lifestyle design. In each section, you'll find links to other resources on that topic.

Change the Rules
We all know the usual prescription for success and happiness: go to a good school, get a good job, buy a house and a car, work hard and save money until you're 65, and then retire and do what you really want to do. In lifestyle design, you turn the rules upside down; you use time, mobility, and technology to create an amazing life for yourself. See my review of the Four Hour Work Week for thoughts on breaking and rewriting the rules.

Be Clear and Unapologetic About Your Dreams:
What do you really want in your life? What would fulfill and energize you? Instead of walking around with a vague notion of, "I want to be happy," identify clearly what you want to do, be, or have. Be specific. Six months on a sailboat. Learning Chinese. Volunteering three days a week. Whatever it is, clarify your dreams. See the page on designing your perfect lifestyle for tips on doing this.

Cultivate Simplicity and Eliminate Unnecessary Crap In Your Life:
Too many of us live with golden handcuffs; we stay in jobs we hate because we have a big mortgage payment, car, etc. We slave away in order to fill our lives with unnecessary junk. This junk - and the job we hate but stay in to buy it all - holds us back from adventures, experiences, and truly appreciating the important things in life (i.e. your dreams identified above). Check out the resources on the benefits of choosing simplicity, 8 key simplicity tips, and quotes about simplicity.

Create a Business That Provides Passive Income:
If you can read this website, you have the tools at your fingertips to become an internet entrepreneur and build a web business that generates passive income. You don't need to create a brick-and-mortar business or be a wall-street tycoon. If you've eliminated unnecessary things in your life and freed up a little time, a web business can allow you to become self-employed and do what you want.

Travel
Geo-arbitrage is an amazing thing. To travel to most places in the world, you don't need a ton of money. You need time and flexibility. If you've simplified your life and generate a small amount of money passively, you can travel creatively and for a long time to places you never believed. For example, did you know you can live like a king in Buenos Aires, Argentina on $2000 a month? In American that might not even cover your mortgage. Check out the article on world traveling for more tips on international adventure.

Jump
Getting out of the rat-race and off the treadmill requires creativity, but it also requires motivation and the courage to jump. At some point, you must simply say, "Enough is enough" and take bold action to take back your life.

I'll close this article with two questions:

Good luck!
Adam

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